Fundamentalism meets deep ecology in Brenda Peterson's new memoir. This rather dark, divine comedy of family and conflicting faiths uses humor to defuse dogma -- whether it is religious or environmental. Acclaimed novelist and nature writer, Peterson takes on human nature and what she calls a spiritual ecology that is as concerned with saving the earth as well as our own souls. She paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that we will all want to be Left Behind.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

My new Huffington Post
commentary is out as a featured post on GREEN and on WORLD/Japan. Please send
this around to your contacts, post to your FaceBook pages, and comment on the Huff. It lets the Huff Post know that readers care about our oceans and wildlife. And for readers of this blog, I’ve added an excerpt about
Hawaiian spinner dolphins I encountered that first appeared in my book, Sister Stories (Viking/Penguin
paperback)

(Excerpted from Sister Stories “Sister as Pod and
Pachyderm” (Viking/Penguin)

While on a
humpback whale research trip in Hawaii, I had the great good fortune to kayak
into a warm-water bay and find myself suddenly surrounded by a pod of sleek
spinner dolphins.

“We’re
in the middle of their nursery,” our kayak guide whispered as we paddled slowly
through deep, turquoise waters.

Six
dorsal fins swam close behind me, their twoosh,
twoosh, a fast, intimate exhalation, like a musical, synchronized sigh.

Then
there were more dolphin inspirations as thirty or so spinners swam close,
circling us. At the sight of so many wild dolphins, I leaned over in wonder and
capsized. Plunged underwater, I was laughing so much I swallowed salty gulps of
ocean. Then I heard them, that familiar, high-pitched click and whir like a
cross between a Geiger counter and a small jet engine. I floated, holding my
breath and listening and smiling as the nursery pod circled me, spinning
through the waves.

Whenever
I encounter wild dolphins, I can feel the communication. First, there is that
calming quiet of my nervous system as I leave gravity above and float –- warm
water like an intimate second skin perfect and complete embrace of me.

Then there is the
dolphin signature whistling and sonar like a much-loved song, lulling and
caressing my body from the inside outwards, along each limb until my fingers and
toes feel radiant, electric. Ecstasy eases into every ache and hidden hurt in
my body and I stretch out as if in a serene, flying dream. Only, this rapture
is underwater and accompanied by the clicking, kind scrutiny of an alien
intelligence I can only begin to fathom.

The
dolphins always surprise me with their tenderness. I tried to synchronize my
breathing with the dolphins and when I lifted my face, I saw several spinners
leaping up, somersaulting, then diving back into the sea, their wake splashing
over my back. I attempted my human version of a signature whistle, complete
with rapid-fire gurgles and bleeps. It seemed to amuse and interest the nursery
pod because they all suddenly cruised closer in a dazzling display of acrobatic
dolphin dance.

Imagine
dozens of dolphins speeding by in a blur of silver and gray skin, ultrasound,
and curve of fin, streaking past in one breath, as if one body. Inside my body
their speed and sound registers like a trillion ricochets, tiny vibrations echoing
off my ribs, within each lobe of my lungs, and spinning inside my labyrinthine
brain like new synapses.

Then
I was alone for a moment. I drifted through the depths so lost in this watery
dreamtime that my mind was also adrift. It is always during these meditative
underwater moments that the dolphins seem most to cherish their human
companions. Suddenly I saw out of the corner of each eye three dolphins flanking
me –- and among them were several tiny dorsal fins –- newborns guarded by their
nursery pod.

I was accepted
inside their pod, surrounded by fast spinners who slowed to accompany my pace.
They kept me in their exact center for what seemed an hour, and it was only
then that I understood what it feels like to be fully adopted into the deep,
welcoming physical communion of dolphins.

I am pod, I felt, with no sense of my
single self. I belong.

Mystics
may call it divine union, this melding of minds, bodies, and souls, this
solitude that suddenly opens into the solace of We are one.

Dolphins
are known to be self-aware; they also show us this soul-mingling and connection,
which our human species only glimpses in rare spiritual insights. Perhaps this
is what dolphins have spent their long evolution achieving:

Instead of
changing their environment around them, they have changed themselves; those big
brains are attuning themselves to one another and the natural world. Maybe
that’s what they’ve been doing these thirty million years longer than humans
have been around: seeking to survive together as a whole. Meanwhile, we’ve been
battling and selecting who among us will survive, never imagining that we are
all humans, all one pod.

About Me

Brenda Peterson is the author of over sixteen books. Her nature writing and novels include Duck and Cover, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” and her first memoir, Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals. Her new memoir, I Want To Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth was chosen as an Indie Next “Best Top Read” and named among the “Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 by The Christian Science Monitor. Peterson lives on the Salish Sea in Seattle, Washington and is a co-founder of Seal Sitters.
For more: www.IWantToBeLeftBehind.com
Peterson's non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Seattle Times, and magazines such as New Age Journal, Sierra, Orion and The Utne Reader. Photo (c) 2010 Chris Stuvek